The invention relates to a device for determining the quality of an output signal to be generated by a signal processing circuit with respect to a reference signal, which device is provided with a first series circuit having a first input for receiving the output signal and is provided with a second series circuit having a second input for receiving the reference signal and is provided with a combining circuit, coupled to a first output of the first series circuit and to a second output of the second series circuit, for generating a quality signal, which first series circuit is provided with
a first signal processing arrangement, coupled to the first input of the first series circuit, for generating a first signal parameter as a function of time and frequency, and
a first compressing arrangement, coupled to the first signal processing arrangement, for compressing a first signal parameter and for generating a first compressed signal parameter,
which second series circuit is provided with
a second compressing arrangement, coupled to the second input, for generating a second compressed signal parameter,
which combining circuit is provided with
a differential arrangement, coupled to the two compressing arrangements, for determining a differential signal on the basis of the compressed signal parameters, and
an integrating arrangement, coupled to the differential arrangement, for generating the quality signal by integrating the differential signal with respect to time and frequency
Such a device is disclosed in the first reference: J. Audio Eng. Soc., Vol. 40, No. 12, December 1992, in particular "A Perceptual Audio Quality Measure Based on a Psychoacoustic Sound Representation" by John G. Beerends and Jan A. Stemerdink, pages 963-978, more particularly FIG. 7. The device described therein determines the quality of an output signal to be generated by a signal processing circuit, such as, for example, a coder/decoder, or codec, with respect to a reference signal. The reference signal is, for example, an input signal to be presented to the signal processing circuit, although the possibilities also include using, as the reference signal, a pre-calculated ideal version of the output signal. The first signal parameter is generated as a function of time and frequency by means of the first signal processing arrangement, associated with the first series circuit, in response to the output signal, after which the first signal parameter is compressed by means of the first compressing arrangement associated with the first series circuit. In this connection, intermediate operational processing of the first signal parameter should not be ruled out at all. The second signal parameter is compressed by means of the second compressing arrangement, associated with the second series circuit, in response to the reference signal. In this connection, too, further operational processing of the second signal parameter should not be ruled out at all. Of both compressed signal parameters, the differential signal is determined by means of the differential arrangement associated with the combining circuit, after which the quality signal is generated by integrating the differential signal with respect to time and frequency by means of the integrating arrangement associated with the combining circuit.
Such a device has, inter alia, the disadvantage that the objective quality signal to be assessed by means of the device and a subjective quality signal, to be assessed by human observers, have a poor correlation.